Near and Far Faith

Cherie cut Rory's hair this week. It's only her 2nd hair cut, but I found myself cringing as Cher took her 1st stab at being a Stylist. It was time for a change. She looks bigger, doesn't she? It's amazing how change that makes us cringe in fear ends up making us actually look more grown up in Christ.

We're (Cher and I) building up our foundation. As we look down the road, we see a great need to have a team surround us to pray for God's direction. So this week we're building up that team by sending out some personal correspondence to some of our closest supporters - people that we know will be honest, will actually pray for us, and will rally with excitement or heartache. The pressing of this need on us is greater and greater as we see God move in ministry.

So Sunday we concluded Go Home, our 1st ever local retreat. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what we did and perhaps you might gain some inspiration in one way or another. I hope so, since we've never done it before and I'd love to save you some trouble.

Overall it was a huge success and we'll do it again. It was risky from a chaotic standpoint to do it the same week as our Vacation Bible school (our summer children's program), but it really worked to our advantage. Each day the 14 students that participated in Go Home worked with the children from 9-12 and then we headed off to Habitat for Humanity's Blitz build. Every night was a bit different, but mostly there was some acoustic worship and Bible study. Here are a few lessons we learned:

Go Habitat! Habitat for Humanity hooked us up. Their policy is typically that each student under 18 needs a chaperon, but they worked overtime to find tasks that we could do around their work sites. It included everything from moving building materials to moving rocks to moving gabage. Lots of moving. To the students, it may have seemed menial at times, but the tasks they jumped on freed up the more skilled workers to get more done. We also happened to land Go Home during their Blitz build, which is where they throw extra effort towards marketing and get more people there. This helped create a team environment greater than usual. The students stepped up and few of them complained at all.

Build in free time. So this is no surprise, but over schedule a week-long activity and you'll have a mutiny on your hands. We let the students choose what we were doing, what songs we worshipped to, even parts of the schedule. It let them own the event a bit and they bought into it for the duration.

Come down hard. This is one I should've known, but didn't put into place. Two things I will definetely do differently next retreat (whatever it is) is to remind the V-Staff (volunteer Staff) of their authority to send students home. The V-Staff stepped up for Go Home and let me sleep at home most of the week. But occasionally when I left the building, they were disrespected. I have always made it clear to our staff that I will back them up when they have to make hard decisions, like sending students home from an event, but it's never really had to be practiced. It's well known that students are looking for boundaries and will push to find them. I believe in freedom of restriction for the most part so that the students learn responsibility, but when the few rules that are in place are disrespected, you and you're staff need to come down hard in love.

Turn your leaders loose. Devin and Amanda, two of our Student Leaders, stepped up huge this week and confirmed for me this principle. They did everything form help plan major parts of the week to handle some tough relational disputes, and they hit it out of the park. I've been trying to teach students to be responsible and treat them like adults - because they deserve it - but it was awesome to see it come together.

So if you're thinking of keeping things cheap (we charged $125 per student, or $25 per day) and local, learn from this. Flex with the economy (that's not in a recession).

Steven Furtick had a great post yesterday that truly echoes with my heart. The field will tilt, but what are we tilting towards?

Ok, this one I have DOWN! I've noticed, and not just in my life, that the passion that great leaders share is accompanied not by the need for organizational help. They surround themselves with people that fill their weaknesses and many times, organization is one of them.

What's awesome about this is that it's ok. Leaders don't need to be amazingly organized. In fact many of the leaders that I've been around that are anal about the organizational aspect are not great leaders at all.

What must consume us as great leaders is a sensitive passion for the vision and goal. Vision casting often goes hand in hand with someone else who's greatest strength is administration. Leaders cast the big goal and all it's details out in front of an audience and then we must learn to step back and let others lead us through the terrain of our weaknesses.

The hang up comes right there... letting others lead us. I believe in a team leadership mentality, where we are all equal in quality as members of the team, but not in every area that necessitates the goal. One of two failures often consume us if we miss this principle: isolation due to thinking we can organize it all ourselves, or complete failure to reach the goal because we didn't invest the time in finding the right people to fill our weaknesses (probably because we don't have any).

A great leader admits a lack of organization and finds someone with that strength in their top 3 abilities and allows them to lead. I've found lately that allowing others to lead often means shutting my trap.

Last night I asked God to get me up when He wanted me to. Usually that's an excuse for sleeping in (don't lie!), but this morning at 6 Tate woke up... and went back to sleep. He never does that. In fact he's been getting up really early for a few weeks now. The spirit was loud... I got up. I got to meet my other neighbor - which never would have happened if I hadn't gotten up that un-godly early .

I've noticed in the great leaders of today that publicizing their weakness, which goes against an entire generation's view on leadership, never mind the culture itself, creates a bond with their audience that is unmatched. I want to follow someone that has been there and screwed up - because if you want me to go there, chances are that something's going off kilter and I want to know that I'm not the only mutant.

The mentality that clergy are closer to God and thus have a better life makes me want to puke. That's like saying because I'm a mechanic I have a nicer car, or because I'm a carpenter I have a nicer house - and we know both those cenarios are rarely true.

I was going to hell, then I made a decision that changed that. It was God that saved me and my life is not mine. Easy to say, right? Then why does it always look like my life when I walk it out?

The bottom line is that we all have failures and struggles and no leader is above that. Publicizing them let's those you are raising up be on your team, and not under your thumb. Hiding weakness is pride and people can sense it eventually. They know it's fake.

Join a team and stop building your empire.

Here's one of mine - I'm scared to meet new people. I have a real issue with acceptance. I could tell you about my reasons, but it doesn't matter. I will make a fool out of myself to feel accepted. Usually this means profuse nervous joking in public. It also keeps me from going out of my church box to meet anyone else. I have 3 neighbors. Up until a month ago I only had met one of them. I've gone golfing with Travis, we have each other's cell #'s, etc. But God's really challenged me over the past few months that these are the easy relationships to be Christ to. Just live next to them. I met Carlos and Rachel about a month ago - he's a UPS driver and they just had their 2nd baby. This morning, After 2 Years, I met Ed. He's taken my garbage cans in for me numerous times. Today I helped him change his flat.

Let me just say this to finish - I wrestle with these things and I need you to get through them because on of the main reasons you are in my life is to help me because I need it.

I've been swamped this week getting ready for our 1st ever, never been done before, local summer retreat. I have a few more thoughts on rare leadership qualities, but I might not get to them til next week. Honestly, blogging is not my top priority.

Also next week (as long as I figure out the technology) will be episode 5 of The Little Big Church Podcast with an interview with Charles Hill, founder of The Sticks conference that will launch this fall. It's an awesome idea for the small town/small church that I won't be attending due to SOMEONE"S due date. Check it out here. See you next week.

We know that we have to fail to learn - and we do. But do we as leaders, in any field, choose failure from time to time?

I know it's typically not a strong leadership quality, but I think if we looked deep enough, great leaders choose the knowledge that comes from failure at the onset of a task.

Here are some great examples: a missions trip that seems way too expensive, a service change that is edgy enough to drive people away, or raising up a leader no one else will touch.

I love listening to Clayton King when he's filling in for Perry Noble. A few months ago he left me with this nugget: "Why do we feel like we have to pray about the things that God has already commanded us to do?" Like sharing the gospel. Why? Because we hate choosing failure and God may be leading us down that road on purpose occasionally. It's a pride thing and deep down we all know it... we don't want to look like a loser.

These are the qualities that good leaders risk that make them great. If I can just put these all together, I could actually speak from experience.

Among the things that I just don't get about how God works is the fact that you can lead, period, let alone a church, without humility. Pride in one's own abilities and ambitions is an epidemic in ministry and clogs the arteries of popular culture.

Why? Because pride is sneaky? No. Because pride feels good. I have a new polo shirt. It's lavender. I got a lot of compliments the first time I wore it. The other day a student asked me why I wore it to an event and I said "Because it makes me feel good about myself." It's true across the board. We all have lists of things that we have done that have been successful or have gotten praise that make us feel good. Note here that they don't go together. Honest people are hard to find today and people will praise you for their own recognition more than for yours. Kinda takes the wind out of the sails, but that's the point.

I"m studying through Matthew and in chapter 4 Jesus is tempted by the Devil, John's imprisoned, and He calls his first four disciples. One of the things that struck me that should be in all of us is a back-seat willingness. In verse 17 we see that He didn't start preaching 'til John stopped, due to imprisonment. How often in our ministries do we push ourselves to the front, take the spotlight, or start our own initiative? We must approach life and ministry with this thought: I am who I am only because Jesus loves on me. And oh, can we twist things out of that to make our pride look like humility. Here's  simple key that I see many people miss (myself included): when you brag about your humility, you've missed the boat.

Work on it today. If we can instill this rare quality we can be more useful to God.

I'm making a few exceptions to my healthy effort. 1) Sweet tea - the love is too strong to sever the relationship. 2) While we will try to choose healthier dinners, I'll eat what's served - I'm not going out of my way too much with the food choice, more food portion.

I've learned this about myself: if I don't make exceptions on endeavors I'll miss the journey and one of two things will happen: either I'll miss the journey of life and end up lonely, or I'll abandon the quest for fear of missing life. So, although it's against many instincts, I build in exceptions to things now. Case and point -today's event. We had a great block party today to get people involved in Power Lab (our summer, week-long, children's program) that took all day to pull off. I spent the day riding around with some of the students that would make it a success and got into a short conversation with Devin, one of our student leaders, about this point. Explaining to her my past mistakes of missing the fun for the sake of a successful event reminded me to enjoy it - really have fun. One of the exceptions I made today was I took Rory (my three-year-old) with me everywhere. It took some more effort, but I saw her more than I would have otherwise. It was worth it.

I even managed to carve out a few minutes among the chaos to read a blog or two and  Steven Furtick's post reinforced the point.

So make some exceptions, but get to the goal. Back up at 6:30 to run tomorrow.

So It's been a long day. It was almost 11 when I got home from Ignite. Since the day included a good 2 miles or so of walking and tomorrow is the Tatamy block party, I'm not running in the morning. Not coping out in the morning when the alarm goes off (someone reading this had to do that this morning), making a wise decision now. Then Thursday, back to the run.

So when you do a blitz week, just in case you were wondering "What's a marketing blitz week for a church event like?", you don't have time for anything else.

Family first. Middle school "better than" stories second. Blog 3rd.

I've barely had time to breath today and it's family time now. But a quick note - i've decided it's time to get healthy and if I don't make it public, I might get lazy. Starting today, I'm eating better (and less).  Meaning less sugar and grease. And I'm running everyday for about 10-15 minutes. Here are my 2 motivations:

First, I simply want to be around for their lives and the lives of their  kids as long as I can.

Second, I'd like to lose this...

It's gotten worse since I started my "twin diet" and let's face it, it's ugly. Yes, your metabolism will slow down and this will happen to you.

And so I embark on a new season. Started reading the New Testament from start to finish today to commemorate the event. Stay tuned for updates.

Ok - no deep spiritual philosophy. Just simplifying life. We had one of these when I was a kid and I snatched one up at a yard sale a few months ago thinking of the kids and how I hate to peel Tate's apples (if I don't he spits the chunks of the peel everywhere). But then I discovered something remarkable: you could put a potato on this thing and it will peel it and cut it up - skipping a whole step! You miss a few spots of the skin, but it peels enough to just run it through the device and toss it in the pot.

We've been eating a lot of mashed potatoes lately.

Rule 4: Focus on as little as possible. A few weeks ago I had to have two hard conversations with two different people that I know love me - because they had the conversations with me. I preach focus like it's my job - and it is - but these brothers both had to tell me to scoop some stuff off my plate and regain mine.

This rule isn't real in depth, but again, hard to practice. Many of us leaders are fixers - we want to see success and we succumb to the lie that if we do it, it will be successful, but if anyone else does it, it' might fail. This leads to the gravy sloshing off one side of our plates while the greens beans are rolling off the other. Our plates are full of stuff to do and that violates rule 1. But the bottom line is this: the less you focus on, the better it will be.

The key here is that scary word many leaders shy away from... no. It means that things go undone and people get upset. But think about this, if we would build a culture around us that says "I don't do everything because I'm not good at everything and I refuse to sacrifice quality", would people get as upset?

Get started now - just pick something to say no to that you would really like to see done well... and see what happens. I've found that the outcomes are limited to 2 categories: either it's not getting done and nobody cares - so drop it, or it's not getting done and now the need is finally clear to to the masses. Unfortunetely, most of the things I've dropped, no one cares about, which hurts at first and you'll try to come up with excuses like "well... they'll only notice after it's too late!" But once you accept your responsibility alone and drop them, it's very freeing.

Whether you're a CEO or a high school student, these rules apply.

Thanks for listening to my short list of the things that are changing me. I hope God uses it to change you.

Here's a blog post that gives some more info about the murder of Amanda Bishop that I talked about last week in this post. The Comments are sobering.

Rule 3: Keep your mouth shut. I've noticed a lot lately my pension for talking when I'm nervous. And talking when I'm excited. And talking when I'm passionate. This is no surprise for me, but what is sobering is the amount of conversations that I interrupt.

I do it to Cherie the most. She has a long list of Godly qualities, but if nothing else, she still talks to me, AND LISTENS, after 8 years. I've also realized that this problem has been intensified lately as my leadership has begun to grow more. I'm excited and passionate about a cause, which should be on every leader's resume. But it can lead to ignorance. I don't hear people because I'm too concerned with getting my point across, even if it's just a related incident in a casual conversation.

Here's the encouraging part (because this can seem like one of those boomerang problems): if you can master it just one conversation at a time, the less you talk the more people listen. I've found when I go into a conversation determined to speak as little as possible, that when I do speak heads turn and people's body language automatically tells me "You have the stage".

But keep it short. I ramble trying to make sure everyone understands and usually I end up just confusing them. Build a culture that says "When I ask you if you understand, you'd better speak up because that's your chance."

Whether you're a CEO or a high school student, these rules apply.

Rule 2: Replace yourself. I take this one from Andy Stanley and his 7 Practices of Effective Ministry and it's podcast, Practically Speaking. I talk about this one a lot because I see it apply a lot, and it's this: Every leader should be trained to work themselves out of a job.

This might not be new for some of us, but in practice it's rare. Here's why: insecurity. I see it's danger in myself. I'm secure in my position - I love my job. The thought of losing it is scary, so stay away from my turf. Where we often go wrong is that we're not replacing ourselves and losing our positions, we're making way for others. It's like sharing. We've all struggled with it since we were 1 or 2, but refusing to allow others to rise up behind you and take over your responsibilities causes 2 problems: you stop growing in leadership and spiritually due to a lack of increasing challenge, and you impeded the growth of others around you. I've also noticed that the long a leader refuses to replace themselves, the more people are impeded and the more people disappear for "no reason", and the leader is left alone with no followers. That's not leading.

2 examples from this: One is the pastor that has a hard time letting others preach for fear of falling out of the spot light. Thankfully Jim just talked about this Sunday and how he enjoys getting other, even more talented teachers, on our stage. Another example of the failure to abide by this rule is the high school student who goes to college, graduates, and returns home... and stays. Not that there aren't exceptions, of course, but think about it... It's a combination of another leader not moving out of the way and a younger leader seeing no reason to continue movement.

Whether you're a CEO or a high school student, these rules apply.

I wanted to take a few posts and talk about some of the key rules that I've learned from various leaders and experiences. In my opinion, a Christ-follower is a leader. So it's our responsibility to learn about ourselves and grow that leadership potential so we can lead others to Christ Himself (I think that's why the phrase was coined... LEAD).

Rule 1: Know the law of respect. Really, first everyone - yeah everyone - should read The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. Changed my life and I refer back to it constantly. The law of respect is a humbling principle that says that people will follow leaders who are stronger than they are due to respect for their leadership. Someone who is an 8 (on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the strongest) will rarely follow a 6. Maxwell says "The less skilled follow the more highly skilled and gifted."

You can improve your leadership though - say grow from a 6 to an 8 - but it requires work. Work that I don't always want to put in.

The rule though is to admit that there are others more apt to lead than you, but you still have a purpose in the kingdom and in life in general.

Another key after admitting this, is to identify to lacking areas of personnel in your life with 2 questions: "Are there people following me?" (that's a big one we'd like to skip) and "Are there stronger leaders in my life to follow?" The second can be threatening at first, but you can learn more from those who are stronger.

Whether you're a CEO or a high school student, these rules apply.